Interesting Facts about Mohen-jo-Daro | Ancient Indus Valley Civilization | Fireup Facts

Mohen-jo-daro is a site of ancient ruins in Sindh, Pakistan built approximately 8,000 years ago, as the discovery, published in the prestigious Nature journal on May 25, 2016, by Scientists from IIT-Kharagpur and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), makes it not just older than the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations but also the oldest in the world.

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The ruins of the city remained undocumented for around 3,700 years until R. D. Banerji, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India, visited the site in 1919–20, identifying the Buddhist stupa known to be there and finding a flint scraper which convinced him of the site's antiquity. This led to large-scale excavations of Mohenjo-Daro led by Kashinath Narayan Dikshit in 1924–25, and John Marshall in 1925–26 and has become an important archaeological find because it once housed the Indus Valley civilization. In 1980 Mohenjo-Daro became the first UNESCO world heritage site in South Asia.

Here are a few mind-boggling facts about this civilization.

The original name of the site is not Mohenjo Daro, in fact nobody knows the real name, but the words Mohenjo Daro which literally can be translate to 'the mound of the dead'. Because the Indus Valley sites were found on a series of mounds over 250 acres of land, and destroyed hence such a name is given to the place.

Mohenjo-Daro was one of the Indus Valley civilization's largest settlements, or cities. The Indus Valley civilization existed in most of North India and today’s Pakistan. It spanned from Iran to Gujarat and went North till Bactria.

Mohenjo-Daro was well-designed and had a layout of streets on a well-planned grid. Mohenjo-Daro is divided into two sections including the Lower City and the Citadel. The Citadel was a mud brick 39 foot high structure that housed the public baths, assembly halls, and about 5000 people. Buildings in Mohenjo-Daro were made of fired and mortared bricks, as well as some sun-dried mud bricks and some wooden structures.

Mohenjo-Daro also had sophisticated water system, houses had baths and toilets, and waste water was channeled through the streets into covered drains. The town featured both an elaborate sewage system and fresh water and 700 well throughout the city.

Mohenjo-Daro did not have any temples, monuments, or palaces like many of the other ancient civilizations. It appears that there was no real central controlling government or royalty, but there may have been elected officials from each region in the city representing them in a larger government. It has been suggested that Mohenjo-Daro was run as a city-state.

Mohenjo-Daro did have wealth however as there are artifacts made of ivory and gold. The Statue of Dancing Girl is also found from site shows that presence of some dance form as well as skilled craftsmanship.

There are around 1,500 sites of the Indus Valley Civilization and no sign of warfare or weapons have been found. This implies that the Indus natives were peaceful in nature, which might have made it vulnerable to foreign invaders.

In 1927, a seated male soapstone figure was found in a building with unusually ornamental brickwork and a wall-niche. Though there is no evidence that priests or monarchs ruled Mohenjo-Daro, archaeologists dubbed this dignified figure a "Priest-King."

After approximately 600 years the city collapsed no one is quite sure why but the cause could potentially have been a change within the culture or in the path of the river without its crucial source of water the city's residents may have moved away leaving Mohenjo-Daro nearly abandoned in 1911 nearly 4,000 years after the city fell into ruin archeologists paid their first visit the ensuing decades of excavations have unearthed countless clues that tell the tale of Mohenjo-Daro but it still holds secrets for us to discover.